A Case in Point, Part I

Recent controversy concerning my proof that the Christian god does not exist has brought a few of Christianity’s more daring defenders out of their comfort zones. We have already seen Prayson Daniel’s unsuccessful attempts to attack my argument (see his blog entries here and here).

I have already interacted with Prayson’s feeble efforts to discredit my argument in a blog entry of my own: see Prayson Daniel vs. the Imaginative Nature of Christian Theism. The discussion in the comments of this entry is particularly fascinating given the fact that Christians are taking issue with my argument’s Premise 1, namely the recognition that the imaginary is not real. Believers are preferring to challenge the premise that the imaginary is not real over seeking to topple my argument’s fourth premise, which affirms outright that the Christian god is imaginary (and not without supporting evidence; see here). The choice to attack my argument’s Premise 1 instead of its Premise 4 suggests, quite strongly I might add, that the believers who take this route are admitting through their actions that they know the god they worship is in fact imaginary. Their concern is not to prove that their god is not imaginary, but to challenge the view that the imaginary is not real.

One comment submitted to Prayson’s blog was particularly noteworthy for the abundance of blunders one can find in its author’s attempts to refute my argument. Posted under the moniker “bethelbaptistchurchblog,” its author does not provide his name (which seems customary for many Christians these days – they apparently want to keep their identities concealed). Trying to remain anonymous might be the only wise move the author made in posting his comment. Throughout his comment, the author incorrectly refers to me as “Beckwith.” This was not his only error, nor was it his biggest. In fact, his comment is so full of fundamental blunders that it is hard to know which one should win an Oscar.

Reacting to Ron Rhodes’ Apologetic:

In my blog entry, I quoted Christian apologist Ron Rhodes’ article Strategies for Dialoguing with Atheists, where he writes:

Some atheists categorically state that there is no God, and all atheists, by definition, believe it. And yet, this assertion is logically indefensible. A person would have to be omniscient and omnipresent to be able to say from his own pool of knowledge that there is no God. Only someone who is capable of being in all places at the same time - with a perfect knowledge of all that is in the universe - can make such a statement based on the facts. To put it another way, a person would have to be God in order to say there is no God.

In response to this, I wrote:

Reasoning like this ignores the broader context of theism, namely that the theist’s god is said to exist outside the universe, that it is not just some item existing within it, like a rock, an asteroid, or particle of dust.

Reacting to my statement, the author wrote:

This misinterprets one of Christianity’s most basic premises, which is not that God exists outside of our Universe, but that the Universe exists within God. This will have significant bearing later in the discussion.

Here the author seems to be disputing my statement simply for the sake of disputing, as though disputing were an end in itself. Or perhaps this is the author’s means of discrediting me in his own mind. He is saying that I am wrong for affirming that Christianity teaches that its god exists “outside the universe,” announcing instead that “one of Christianity’s most basic premises” is “that the universe exists within God.”

What the author affirms in place of the view that the Christian god exists outside the universe, resembles panentheism. As James Anderson explains in his paper The Theistic Preconditions of Knowledge: A Thumbnail Sketch:

According to panentheists, God contains the universe but is not identical with it (i.e., the universe is a proper part of God). The panentheist conception of God is often analogized to the dualist conception of human nature: the universe is thought of as God’s ‘body’, while his transcendent immaterial aspect is thought of as God’s ‘mind’ or ‘soul’.

I confess that the author’s view that “the Universe exists within God” is very hard for me to distinguish from the view Anderson describes here as “panentheism,” which he goes on to critique and find inferior to Christian theism.

Moreover, numerous examples can be gleaned from Christian apologetic literature showing that defenders of Christianity themselves hold that their god exists “outside the universe.” Here are just a few that I found quite readily:

Matt Slick of the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry argues:

since a Transcendent God would exist outside the universe and not be dependent on it, it is logical to expect that such evidence for God's existence would share transcendent characteristics. In other words, they would exhibit qualities of a Personal Being who is independent from the physical universe.

Slick makes the following point in his definition of ‘transcendence’:

Transcendence is a theological term that, when referring to the Christian God, states that God is outside of the universe and is independent of it and its properties.. God is "other," "different" from his creation. He is independent and different from his creatures (Isaiah 55:8-9). He transcends his creation. He is beyond it and not limited by it or to it.

Similarly, on the Apologetics 315 blog, we find the following:

Transcendence: That which is higher than or surpasses other things. What is transcendent is thus relative to what is transcended. God is conceived by traditional theologians as being transcendent with respect to the created universe, meaning that he is outside the universe and that no part of the universe is identical to him or part of him.

Lastly, a tract put out by Ron Lewis Ministries titled God His Attributes Study #7 states the following:

God’s transcendence represents His existence outside of and independent from the universe.

So it seems that it is commonly held among Christians themselves that their god exists “outside the universe.” Thus the author’s objection and correction seem aloof of what other Christians are saying. If he disputes the view that the Christian god exists “outside the universe,” his argument is with other Christians, not with me. Thus the conflict here is internal to Christianity. Such a dispute does nothing to challenge my position, since I do not affirm the existence of the Christian god in the first place.

But what’s worse than all this is the fact that the author’s correction does nothing to answer my reaction to Ron Rhodes’ statement. Whether the Christian wants to say that his god exists “outside the universe” or that “the Universe exists within God,” it is clear that, according to either view, looking for the Christian god within the universe should not be expected to result in any success in discovering it. Indeed, the author has ignored the very next point which I stated in my blog entry, which is:

If an atheist had traveled the entire universe and found no god, the theist could easily say he was looking in the wrong place, for the theist says his god is infinite and not part of the material universe.

So again, the author seems anxious to pick gnat droppings out of his beans and deposit them right into his rice.

We will find that such self-deprecating antics are a norm with this apologist.

The author then quoted the following from my blog:

Even worse, given this kind of reasoning, one would have to have searched the entire universe to reject the notion of a square circle.

The author reacts to my point, saying:

This is a logical fallacy. All one needs do to assume that a square circle does not exist, is realize that a “square circle” violates the Law of Contradiction.

Clearly the author does not recognize that my point was stated in response to a Christian’s argument! On my view, I can readily dismiss self-contradictory ideas like “square circles”; incidentally, it is on the same basis, namely the internally contradictory nature of a notion, that we are justified in rejecting the god of Christianity, as I argue in my paper Gods and Square Circles. My point in response to Rhodes’ statement is that, on his view, “no one is justified in believing that square circles do not exist at all” since, given Rhodes’ assumptions, one could never be certain that a square circle might be “hiding behind some asteroid or quasar, or under a pebble on some moon in another galaxy.” The author thus errs in presuming that he is rebutting my position. But indeed, his is not rebutting my position. By implication, he is rebutting the defense of another Christian. Just as in the old Mad Magazine we enjoyed “Spy vs. Spy” comics, here we have Christian vs. Christian. Nice! Only the author is not clever enough to recognize that he’s refuting another Christian’s defense.


Interacting with My Argument:

In regard to my argument proper, the author states:

moving to his premises and conclusion, it is easily demonstrated that none of his premises hold up under scrutiny, and that his conclusion therefore cannot be true.

From this point, the author proceeds to try to refute my argument, premise by premise. That’s right – he wants to show that each of my premises is untrue. This has got to be one of the most unwise moves in apologetic history.

Remember the first premise of my argument? It states:

Premise 1: That which is imaginary is not real.

In response to my argument’s Premise 1, the author produced two paragraphs that are so ripe that every statement needs to be savored for all it’s got. The author begins his response with the following statement:

This is an a priori assumption, and isn’t even accurate on its face.

I’m never as embarrassed for another individual as when I examine the efforts of a Christian trying to defend his worldview. And in this case, it’s like a climax from Mahler’s 9th Symphony: intense, sweet, and cathartic. For the Christian seeking to net another fish, however, such elation on the part of the non-believer is not an intended effect. Indeed, far from desired!

The author provides no support for supposing that my Premise 1 is “an a priori assumption.” However, it is at least nominally relevant to point out the fact that many Christians have no qualms per se with a priori assumptions. So it is curious that the author would lead off with this allegation as if it were damning all around.

For example, presuppositional apologist Michael Butler states that a priori notions are inherent in the transcendental argument for the Christian god’s existence. This would mean that the notion of a priori knowledge is entirely consistent with the Christian worldview.

Butler explains that transcendental arguments as such are distinguished from other types of arguments “by the fact that they appeal only to a priori knowledge – what we can know without any appeal to experience” (“The Transcendental Argument for God’s Existence,” The Standard Bearer: A Festschrift for Greg L. Bahnsen, p. 91). Clearly Butler assumes that the notion of a priori is compatible with Christian theism. Butler never produces an argument for this assumption, but it is indisputably present in what he assumes.

So it’s hard to see why a Christian would consider this to be a suitable objection against my Premise 1, unless of course he is not a presuppositionalist and rejects the notion of a priori knowledge. But this would invite further controversies within the Christian tent which by themselves would only confirm one of the premises I’ve offered on behalf of the conclusion that the Christian god is imaginary. Point 11 in my list of evidences showing why the god of Christianity is imaginary states the following:

Conflicting versions of “the supernatural” among those professing the same religious confession strongly indicate a subjective nature to god-belief, especially given the failure of those who clash with each other due to such conflicts to reach consensus. Within Christianity alone, believers differ on the topic of salvation, the nature of faith, the importance of the resurrection, the nature of the atonement, the role of free will, predestination, hell, heaven, the “end times,” the trinity, God’s love, God’s wrath, God’s judgment, prayer, apologetic methodology, the continuation or cessation of miracles, etc., etc. Where believers find themselves in conflict is in their conception of “the supernatural.” In mundane matters, they find themselves in agreement: mountains are composed of dirt and rock, rivers carry water, trees have roots, cars go on streets, supermarkets sell milk, elected officials can be corrupt, pens have ink, radios receive radio waves, etc. In areas concerning actually existing things which can be perceived directly by means of the senses, there is nearly universal agreement. But in areas which vary from one imagination to another, there is a predominance of conflict and contradiction.

How would two Christians who find themselves in conflict on the question of whether or not there is such a thing as a priori knowledge go about settling the matter? What would be their final court of appeal? Could they consult the bible on this? Where does the bible say anything about “a priori knowledge”? Can it be inferred from what the bible says? Is “revelation” a form of “a priori knowledge”? It certainly is not clear: people claiming to know something by means of “revelation” typically say they’ve had an experience corresponding to what they call “revelation” (otherwise how would they be able to claim they’ve received a “revelation”?), in which case knowledge which is said to have been acquired by “revelation” seems to be a species of a posteriori knowledge. But surely such knowledge is not the same as knowledge acquired by means using the senses. Indeed, one could claim to know anything by means of “revelation.” That is because imagination is in charge. Thus internal conflicts such as we find among various Christian factions can be considered essentially guaranteed since we know what lies behind it.

Of course, I do reject the notion of a priori knowledge since such a notion denies the nature of man’s mind. We need input from reality to develop any knowledge of it, and we need a means of acquiring it, namely the senses. This means experience is required for knowledge. Genuine knowledge of reality comes only by means of an active, rational process which the knower performs volitionally. If one claims to know something apart from experience as such, what he claims to know is not knowledge.

But does this make knowledge of what my Premise 1 affirms beyond our reach? Of course, it does not. I know what is real by applying reason to what I experience, by identifying and integrating what I perceive by means of concepts, and I know what it is to imagine something because I have experienced imagining things. I also know by comparing and contrasting these two types of experiences – perceiving and identifying things which exist independent of me, and imagining things – that they are not the same types of conscious activity. Moreover, I can observe an object while I imagine it undergoing any kind of transformation I can think of, and watch to see if my imagination has any effect on it. I can, for instance, observe a book sitting on my table while I imagine it levitating and flying around the room I’m in. When I observe that the book is not in fact doing what I imagine it is doing, I can see firsthand from this complex experience that the book and what I imagine are distinct from each other. I can, from such observation, formulate the general principle that (a) imagination and reality are distinct from one another, and (b) the imaginary is not real.

So, contrary to what the author baldly asserts, my Premise 1 is not an a priori assumption after all. It is a general principle anyone can draw from experience.

The author also states that the view that that which is imaginary is not real “isn’t even accurate on its face.” We should read this statement autobiographically: it tells us about the author, not about the actual nature of products of imagination. He saying that, from his standpoint, not only that the recognition that the imaginary is not real is not true, but that as a matter of reflex the imaginary should be treated as though it were real.

So on the author’s view, if I imagine an 800-foot tall bunny rabbit doing pushups on the surface of the moon, there really is a giant bunny doing pushups on the moon. Why? Because the view that the imaginary is not real “isn’t even accurate on its face.” So anyone saying that the bunny I imagine on the moon is not real must be wrong, according to the author.

But is that at all rational? Let us examine what else says next.

He asks:

To whom is it not real?

Doesn’t this question suggest the perspective of relativism? It surely seems to. The author seems to be willing to say that something is real “to” one person even if it is not real “to” another. But I thought Christianity rejected this kind of wishy-washy viewpoint. And yet, here is a Christian resorting to an appeal to relativism in order to defend his theism.

If something exists, doesn’t it exist independent of personality, independent of any individual’s viewpoint, independent of anyone’s experience? The author’s question suggests that what exists is in fact dependent on personal perspective, individual experience, perhaps even personal preference. Why suppose that the view that the imaginary is not real “isn’t even accurate on its face,” but the view that something can be real to one person but unreal to another is “accurate on its face”? Would the Christian be comfortable if we say that the Christian god is real “to believers,” but not real “to non-believers”? Would he accept this? I’m guessing not. Christians like to claim that the god they imagine is real to everyone, whether one believes it or not. (In this way, they borrow the primacy of existence principle from Objectivism.)

So again, if I imagine a giant bunny rabbit doing exercises on the surface of the moon, who’s to say the robot I’m imagining is not real? Who’s to say there is no bunny rabbit actually doing things on the moon? Per the author’s retort here, this could be real “to” someone, even if it is not real “to” someone else. On such a view, reality is completely subjective, and what may be happening per the subjective impulses of one person may not be happening per the subjective impulses of someone else.

Like Jesus willfully allowing himself to be nailed up on a cross, the author offers himself as a case in point: Christianity deliberately blurs the distinction between the real and the imaginary, and here is a clear, unambiguous example for all to see.

The author then asks:

What are the conditions for “reality?”

Well, if his previous question (“To whom is it not real?”) is assumed to be conceptually valid in the context in which it was posed, why cannot a similar view be taken in response to the author’s current question? For instance, why can we not say: “The conditions for reality may be real to you, but not to me”? Indeed, if someone addresses the author’s question by identifying some “condition for reality,” why couldn’t someone else come along and ask “To whom is that condition real?”? The author seems to have no integrated, principled structure of thought whatsoever. But that is what we should expect from Christianity as such when it comes to fundamentals, for that is where their worldview confusions have their genesis.

In terms of discourse, it appears that the author is trying to create a smokescreen, a haze concealing some shifty maneuvering with basic concepts, albeit with the clumsiness of a novice unaware of his lack of skill. He apparently expects his readers to be as unclear on basic principles as he is. Perhaps he is accustomed to readers who are willing to go along with the kind of obfuscation he is seeking to implement with such questions. If so, it is good that he has ventured out of his comfort zone.

The author then writes:

I think we can all agree that leprechauns are not “real,”

Wait a minute! To whom are they not real? Has the author suddenly decided to abandon his earlier course of inquiry? Why would he suppose, so quickly after asking “To whom is it not real?”, that he can speak for the anonymous “we” here in such an absolutist fashion? Yes, people generally agree that leprechauns do not exist, that they are not real. But the author’s shift from his previous stance of relativism to a more definite, if not majoritarian, position, is inexplicable, assuming we are expected to take his previous question seriously.

The author then “reasons”:

but if I were to draw a leprechaun on a sheet of paper, it would exist in reality despite the fact that it did not exist elsewhere.

While it is true that when something exists in one place, it does “not exist elsewhere” (e.g., the pebble lying in my backyard exists in my backyard here in Bangkok, not in the backyard of someone living in Minneapolis), it is puzzling that the author might genuinely think that if he draws something he has imagined, what he imagines therefore exists. Surely the drawing exists – as lines on a piece of paper, for instance. But when the author imagined a leprechaun, did he simply imagine a piece of paper with a drawing on it, did he? Is that all that “leprechaun” means? What exactly did the author imagine? I can draw a giant bunny rabbit doing pushups on the lunar surface, but this would not be the same thing as saying that what I imagined is actually real. Again, the author only exposes his root-level confusions here.

The author makes another attempt to provide some reasoning:

If I write a story to accompany the illustration, the leprechaun becomes even more real in that its character, actions and interpersonal relationships are described in detail; the more detail I add to either the drawing or the story, the more “real” the leprechaun becomes.

I have to say, I wish I knew this author’s name. Even more, I wish I could shake his hand and thank him in person for everything he has stated here. For he is confirming the validity and applicableness of Point 3 in my list of evidences indicating the imaginary nature of the Christian god, which in part states:

Adherents learn details about their god from written stories (which puts the Christian god, for example, in the same camp as characters in texts which are known to be fictional). Written stories give the human mind an opportunity to develop vivid imaginations and fantasies. The dominant function of allegory in religious literature is to provide the imagination with the fundamental material to work with in developing lifelike as well as larger-than-life psychological replicas of heroes, villains, events, and cosmic personalities portrayed in religious literature while allowing for a strong element of personal relevance. The Christian believer, for instance, reads about his god in the Old and New Testaments. In these sources, which are dubbed revelatory communication directly from the god he reads about in their pages, the believer finds stories which provide often vivid narratives which the believer personalizes in his imagination of them and accepts as truthful, historical accounts.

So not only is imagination involved here, but also a story to make the imaginary more concrete, to give it “life.”

I made a similar point in my blog The Role of Imagination in Christian God-Belief:

Imagination is a central ingredient to the religious experience. Religious stories are the prime vehicle for religious beliefs: they supply the props and motifs which inspire the initial content of the believer's imagination, and it is the believer's imagination which serves as the fundamental content of his belief experience. In the case of Christianity, it is because the stories of the gospel narratives and other "histories" are 'uploaded' into the believer's imagination and combined with content taken from everyday experiences, that they seem vital, real and alive to him.

Stories fueling religious imagination in the minds of believers are confirmed by the author to play the role I have identified in previous writings on the matter. But why stop there? The purpose of the stories is for the believer to interact with the imaginary as much as possible so that its emotional content influences the believer’s choices and actions. Thus Christianity also has believers pray to the god they erect in their imaginations. Thus as I pointed out in my blog Faith as Hope in the Imaginary:

Prayer is the means by which the believer can commune, albeit one-sidedly, with an imaginary being. Talking to the imaginary makes it seem more real. If practiced consistently, the believer begins to feel like someone is actually listening. And he will take anything – even the barking of a dog – as a sign from the supernatural back to him.

The goal of having the believer interact with the imaginary is to make the imaginary “seem more real” to the believer, just as the author confesses that “the more detail [he] add[s] to either the drawing or the story, the more ‘real’ the” thing he imagines “becomes.” Naturally, if one carries on the pretense that the imaginary is real to the extent that he starts talking to it, the pretended dialogue gives the imaginary a new dimension of seeming real to the believer.

The author then states:

The story and the drawing are limited in scope only by my imagination, not by the constraints of empirical reality; even though leprechauns do not exist in “the real world,” there is, clearly, one leprechaun which does exist– mine.

Notice the first statement: imagination is the only limit acknowledged. The “constraints of empirical reality” are considered irrelevant to the content of the story. And while lip service is paid to the view that something imaginary does not really exist, the blur between reality and imagination resulting from the author’s own personal investment in what he imagines has already been set into place.

So here we have a true act of religious creation: first you imagine something, then you do something to make the imaginary seem more real, including casting it into a story, even talking to it as though it were real. Just as the Christian god is said by believers to have created the universe by an act of consciousness, here we see the tell-tale signs that believers create their god by an act of consciousness, namely by means of imagination.

But here’s the mystery given the position the author is defending: on what basis can he affirm that “leprechauns do not exist in ‘the real world’” when clearly he is implying that something does exist when one imagines it? Blank out.

The author then proposes his own revision of my Premise 1:

In light of this, the more accurate premise would be: That which cannot be imagined is not real. However, since our leprechaun can be imagined, it has been given reality. So to say that God, Who can be imagined, is not real based on the premise that He is imaginary begs the question.

The author clearly wants imagination to have a role in determining what is real. Here the inability of something to be imagined means that it cannot be real. But why would this be what determines what is real? And why would this be an improvement over my Premise 1? The author anticipates neither of these questions, for he does not present any case for his suggested revision to be taken seriously. How would one know whether or not there is something that cannot be imagined in the first place?

What’s also clear is the fact that the author believes that imagining something gives what is imagined “reality,” for he states explicitly that “since our leprechaun can be imagined, it has been given reality.” Stated as this has in the context of defending one’s god-belief, the implication that imagination is in fact the type of conscious activity involved in apprehending the Christian god is inescapable: Since the Christian god can be imagined, goes the author’s reasoning, it has been given reality. The author in turn seeks to use this reversal of reasoning as the basis for leveling a charge of circular reasoning against the view that the imaginary is not real. Unfortunately, like the god the author worships, the fallacy he feigns to have detected in my Premise 1 is clearly a figment of his own imagination.

Really, I’m not making any of this up. It’s all right there on Prayson Daniel’s blog. As I’ve stated before, let Christians hang themselves. Just let them defend their god-belief, and their lunacy cannot fail but to come out.

To be continued...

by Dawson Bethrick